When Coventry University researcher Michael Duncan asked children aged 9–15 to draw what they loved most about soccer, the boys sketched trophies and league tables while the girls drew pictures of people standing together. That simple difference—captured through the "write-draw-show-tell" method, a technique designed to unlock deeper insights from young participants—reveals something that could reshape how coaches introduce competition to grassroots sports.
The research matters because childhood sport participation plummets after age 11, and understanding what actually motivates children to keep playing could be transformative. Professor Duncan and his team divided their participants into boys and girls, then further by age groups under and over 12, asking each what made soccer genuinely enjoyable. The results were striking: boys identified competition as the core of their enjoyment, regardless of age. Girls, by contrast, prioritized the support, togetherness, and social bonds that come with being part of a team—though they still valued winning, just not in the way boys did.
The distinction runs deeper than mere preference. Boys reported enjoying their own strong individual performance, even when their team lost. Girls found their greatest satisfaction in team success, their enjoyment rooted in collective achievement rather than personal glory. For boys, competition meant personal excellence. For girls, it meant belonging to something larger than themselves.
"There has perhaps been a tendency to consider competition at an early age to be a negative thing for children, but our research suggests that competition is not a bad thing and—especially for boys—it is an integral part of why they enjoy playing," Duncan said. He emphasized that "enjoyment can really be defined as high-quality motivation," and that finding ways to maximize it matters enormously given the documented dropout rates in youth sports.
What makes this research particularly valuable is its challenge to coaches and sports organizations. The conventional wisdom often treats competition as something to minimize or soften for young athletes. Duncan's findings suggest the opposite: competition isn't the problem. How it's framed and presented to different groups is. Coaches can harness boys' competitive drive to keep them engaged while designing team-focused competition structures that celebrate collective success for girls—honoring what each group actually values without abandoning competition altogether.
The methodology itself—asking children to literally show rather than just tell what they loved—captured nuances that traditional surveys might have missed. Those drawings, those trophies and league tables versus those images of togetherness, became data points that speak louder than any questionnaire response could.
As Duncan noted, "The picture for girls is a little more nuanced. They gained most enjoyment from the togetherness, support and social connections you experience as part of a team. They still valued competition, but it was competition and success as a team that they enjoyed most." This insight opens a door for coaches: competition isn't the enemy of team cohesion; it's how you frame it that determines whether it builds or fractures group bonds.
The findings suggest a path forward where competition isn't eliminated but intelligently designed—honoring individual achievement where it drives engagement, and team achievement where it does. In doing so, coaches might keep more children playing the sports they love well past age 11.